I can't say Amazon has lost my business, because we have had some serious failures of shipments from the UK Dutch parcel delivery service problem and I don't always have time to hoick into Amsterdam on the off-chance that Waterstone's or the American Book Center will have the title I want.

Every now and then Mahmoud would force a son or domestic of his to go down and hoick out a pearl, and this pearl he would exchange for something that he absolutely needed, such as a new tent or a new camel, and then he went on living the way he had been living before.